Special Branch officer to be quizzed over Omagh bombing

A SPECIAL Branch officer is to be questioned in a new twist to the police investigation into the Omagh bomb atrocity.

He is the chief suspect as the source of an anonymous telephone call which warned of a planned attack in the Co Tyrone town on the day 29 people were killed by the Real IRA.

The call to a detective in Omagh was made on August 4, 1998, 11 days before the bombing, but the information was never passed on to police on the ground.

The officer is to be asked if he made the call, and if he did, why he did so. The source of the telephone call has never been traced.

A male caller contacted the police office in Omagh at 10am on August 4, 1998, when he spoke to a detective constable. He named two men whom he claimed would be bringing across the border four dismantled AK-47 rifles and two rocket launchers belonging to the Continuity IRA which, he said, would be used in an attack on police in Omagh on August 15.

The caller claimed the weapons would be taken to a house close to the village of Beragh, outside Omagh, and then moved to another address in advance of the attack. The telephone conversation lasted between 10 and 15 minutes and the caller claimed he would contact the police again the following evening.

At the time, the officer believed the caller to be genuine, briefed the senior detective on duty and travelled to Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, where he informed Special Branch officers. They allegedly told him there was nothing in the information and the two men named were ordinary criminals. However, one of the officers asked that he be present in the Special Branch office in Omagh the next day for the second call. It never came.

The August 4 call and the text of the information was never registered on the database which was set up for the huge police investigation and it was not until two years later, during a review of the inquiry by the RUC, that officers in Omagh became aware it had been made. But the source was never identified.

Phone records at the time of the Omagh bombing were only kept for three months and although police later denied that there had been a book detailing all threats before the attack, some victims’ relatives believe there was one which mysteriously disappeared.

Suspicions about who the caller could be were raised several months ago, but detectives have still to question the suspect specifically about Omagh, although he has been interviewed as part of a separate investigation.

Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kinkaid, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s crime operations department, who is overseeing the investigation, was not prepared to comment on the new line of inquiry.

“The Police Service of Northern Ireland continues to dedicate significant resources from its crime operations department to investigate all aspects of the Omagh atrocity,” he said.

“All matters examined by the investigation team will be forwarded to the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) for his directions.”

The disclosure that officers are to question one of their own men will heighten pressure from some of the victims’ families for a full judicial inquiry.

Six and a half years on nobody has yet been charged with the murders of the 29 victims.